Featured Poet: Brian Turner
Brian Turner is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently: The Wild Delight of Wild Things (2023), The Goodbye World Poem (2023), and The Dead Peasant’s Handbook (2023), all forthcoming with Alice James Books. His other collections include Here, Bullet to Phantom Noise, and the memoir My Life as a Foreign Country. He is the editor of The Kiss and co-editor of The Strangest of Theatres anthologies. A musician, he has also written and recorded several albums with The Interplanetary Acoustic Team, including 11 11 (Me Smiling) and The Retro Legion’s American Undertow. His poems and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, Harper’s, among other fine journals, and he was featured in the documentary film Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, which was nominated for an Academy Award. A Guggenheim Fellow, he has received a USA Hillcrest Fellowship in Literature, the Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship, the Poets’ Prize, and a Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. He lives in Orlando, Florida, with his dog, Dene, the world’s sweetest golden retriever.
Musical Guests: The CarLeans
The CarLeans are a musical collaboration between singer-songwriters Jim Carpenter (guitar, vocals), Sarah MacLean (guitar, vocals) and Rachel MacLean-Sargent (vocals). Along with bassist Corina Malbaurn, the Connecticut-based quartet blend their diverse musical backgrounds to create a captivating sound that had been garnering much attention from New England to Florida to Texas. Their vast repertoire adapts well to the various regions they tour through (folk, cajun, latin, and americana) . . . at once narrative, humorous, raw and powerful. Jim's percussive, driving guitar joins with Malbaurn’s equally solid upright bass to lay groove for the MacLean twin's soulful, commanding voices. The performance is at once a gritty, emotional whisper; dynamic sibling harmony, and a stunning R&B confession . . . offset by a sudden comical exchange and inevitably inciting the audience to its feet to dance.
The CarLeans have had the good fortune to perform at such esteemed venues as the Infinity Hall CT, Daryl's House NY, Awendaw Barn, SC, The Narrows, MA, Isis Music Hall NC, Skinny Pancake VT, Saxon TX, Neutral Ground LA, Katharine Hepburn Theater CT, Good Stuff NC, Prohibition FL, Eugene O'Neil Theater CT and Osippee Music Fest ME . . . sharing the stage with The Subdudes, Mipso, Marcia Ball, Hurrah for Riff Raff, Chris Ross, Donna the Buffalo and Birds of Chicago.
Opening Voice: Steven Ostrowski
Steven Ostrowski is a poet, fiction writer, painter and songwriter. His work appears widely in literary journals, magazines and anthologies. He is the recent winner of the 2021 Wolfson Chapbook Prize for his poetry manuscript, Persons of Interest. He's also the author of five previously published chapbooks--four of poems and one of stories. He and his son Ben are authors of a full-length collaboration called Penultimate Human Constellation, published in 2018 by Tolsun Books. His first novel, The Highway of Spirit and Bone, is forthcoming from Lefora Books. He is a Professor Emeritus of English at Central Connecticut State University.